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Spatial Inequality and Locational Disadvantage: New Perspectives on an Old Debate
Abstract
The group of papers within this Forum represent the contents of a seminar on spatial inequality in Australia's cities organised by the Geography Discipline, Flinders University of South Australia. The seminar addressed two important issues for urban policy and research in Australia, the spatial pattern of disadvantage within Australia's cities and recent Federal initiatives in this area. In the early 1990s the Federal Government used its major policy reviews and research programs to commission a number of studies into the structure of our cities. Their findings were, to a certain extent at least, at odds with the commonly accepted view of Australian cities (see for example, Stretton 1989; Badcock 1984) because they challenged the image of the outer suburbs as areas of pronounced disadvantage (see Burgess and Skeltys 1992; NHS 1992a; and Maher el al. 1992). They have been the source of some unease within the academic community.
... The findings suggested that the supposed link between locational and social disadvantage and suburban 'sprawl' was empirically tenuous and in part politically motivated. As Andrew Beer noted in 1994, the debate about locational disadvantage in the early 1990s had become 'embroiled' in the debates over the reform of infrastructure pricing and the need for a more dense urban form (Beer, 1994). This view is supported by Maher's 1994 statement that: ...
... As indicated above, this line of thinking was in keeping with the assumptions of the Federal Government under the influence of Labor Deputy Prime Minister, Brian Howe who, by the early 1990s, had included locational disadvantage as a focus of the federal Labor government's social justice strategy. Chris Maher, to the contrary, argued that there was no evidence that those living on the fringe were particularly disadvantaged (see Beer, 1994;Maher, 1994). ...
... This research was also strongly informed by housing concerns. These studies occurred through the Federal Government's Social Justice Research Program into Locational Disadvantage—and generated a vigorous subsequent policy debate (Maher et al., 1992; Travers Morgan, 1992; Badcock, 1994; Beer, 1994; Maher, 1994). The purpose of Maher et al.'s (1992) study was to investigate residential mobility, and to determine the extent to which socio-spatial processes operated to disadvantage some groups in terms of the attributes of the locations to which households were attracted or allocated. ...
... This research was also strongly informed by housing concerns. These studies occurred through the Federal Government's Social Justice Research Program into Locational Disadvantage—and generated a vigorous subsequent policy debate (Maher et al., 1992; Travers Morgan, 1992; Badcock, 1994; Beer, 1994; Maher, 1994). The purpose of Maher et al.'s (1992) study was to investigate residential mobility, and to determine the extent to which socio-spatial processes operated to disadvantage some groups in terms of the attributes of the locations to which households were attracted or allocated. ...
This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social–transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper.
... It is generally believed that compact cities have the potential to reduce the distance between home and work and reduce the use of private cars, saving time and money spent on commuting [30], and public transportation is considered to work better [31]. In this study, we posit that the relationship between urban compactness and transportation is not necessarily linear. ...
City shape is an essential reflection of spatial structure, but it has largely been ignored in urban form research. This study employs night-time satellite imagery to depict the scope of urban economic activity to investigate its impact on urban poverty. It is the first study to provide a comprehensive assessment of the mechanisms of city shape on urban poverty by using the fixed-effect estimate methodology for panel data of 285 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that city compactness has an inverted U-shaped relationship with poverty incidence, which was verified by several robustness tests. Compactness can significantly attract more population into the city, and space costs and commuting costs are important influence channels. Furthermore, there exists heterogeneous nexus between city shape and urban poverty. Compactness has more significant poverty reduction effects in low-attractive cities with low productivity, low wages, and high illiteracy rates.
... It reduces the money spent on travel on one hand, and it may increase the time required for travel on the other [14], [18]. The use of public transport becomes more viable and promotes accessibility [19], [20]. ...
Cities are the engines of economic growth. The concentration of population in urban settlements is a result of the centralization of resources and triggers in-migration. Sprawl, congestion, increasing densities, and social exclusion are the major urban challenges faced by the cities of the developing world. At this juncture, it is important for planners to address these issues to make the cities liveable. The compact city concept is one of the concepts to address similar problems faced by the developing world. Implementation of the compact city concept is limited to an increase in density, redistribution of density, implement transit-oriented development schemes, and mixed uses of the land resource in existing practices. The compact city concept is widely discussed and debated due to its benefits and costs with respect to sustainable urban development. This paper aims to conduct an in-depth study on the sustainable compact city concept by taking into account the literature available from various contexts around the world. The paper investigates the existing methodologies and proposes the optimal methodology for sustainable compact city planning.
... The relationship between cycling and 'place' becomes more complex as the increase of housing prices in most Australian cities (Birrell & Healy, 2003;Burke & Pinnegar, 2007) coupled with the geographical expanses of the country and the search for affordable housing forced many newly arrived migrants and refugees to live further away from the inner city (Beer, 1994;Burke & Pinnegar, 2007;Evans & Gavaroto, 2010). This resulted in an increase in travel distance to and from desired destinations that contributed to a major change in cycling behaviour and was associated with a greater sense of displacement. ...
This study investigates relationships and characteristics of participation in cycling in Melbourne, Australia, as an expression of place and displacement among persons from culturally and linguistically diverse origins including Asia (i.e. Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Japan) and Arab Africa (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Sudan). Using a mixed-method approach, results indicated that despite a significant number of migrants to Australia with origins in places where cycling is a common mode of transport and activity, a large number of newly arrived and marginalised migrants and refugees are less likely to engage in cycling. Cyclists' identity, citizenship, social-economic marginalisation and residential geographic isolation significantly impacted on their cycling in Melbourne. Although cycling is considered accessible, environmentally friendly, healthy and functional, the results indicated that this view may only represent and be shared by selected citizens. In short, culturally and linguistically diverse participants identified cycling behaviour differently in Australia in comparison with cycling in their countries of origin. The results contribute to knowledge in highlighting the extent of displacement facing marginalised communities that evolves in everyday practices of local mobility. The study identified a number of paradoxes facing mainstream policy makers, researchers and cycling advocates who tend to take cycling participation for granted as non-political and universal.
... However by the early 1990s, the concerns enunciated by academics and policy makers prompted a set of studies into the spatial problem of urban locational disadvantage in Australian cities. These studies occurred through the Federal Government's Social Justice Research Program into Locational Disadvantage (SJRPLD) -and a vigorous subsequent policy debate (Maher et al. 1992; Travers Morgan 1992; Badcock 1994; Beer 1994; Maher 1994). The Maher et al study is highly pertinent to the present discussion. ...
This research monograph reports on the preliminary investigations of a pilot project that examines the relationship between social status and transport disadvantage. The purpose is to review the literature relating to how social status is patterned and organised spatially within cities and to examine the links that have been iditified between social status and transport disadvantage
... Limited attention was given to transport issues in relation to social disadvantage in Australia during the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, the concerns enunciated by academics and policy makers prompted a set of studies into the spatial problem of locational disadvantage in Australian cities (Maher et al. 1992; Travers Morgan 1992; Badcock 1994; Beer 1994; Maher 1994). In their study, which formed the basis for much of the recent Australian discussion of locational disadvantage, Maher et al. (Maher et al. 1992) offered the following conceptual description: ...
Urban mobility is a key determinant of household social status. The capacity to traverse urban space to undertake employment and to obtain the various goods and services that contribute to social wellbeing is dependent upon the transport options available to households. Contemporary planning for urban mobility is overwhelmingly focused on catering for travel by private automobile. Households that lack the financial or personal capacities to travel by car are potentially at a disadvantage in their ability to achieve social wellbeing. This paper examines the links between household social status and transport disadvantage through a review of concepts for the analysis of transport disadvantage in urban research and policy making. The paper argues that new approaches to understanding transport disadvantage are necessary if we are to begin to address the adverse consequences of constrained or restricted urban mobility. The paper argues that GIS-based analyses offer substantial scope for better understanding urban transport disadvantage. The paper presents findings from a case study of the Gold Coast City that tested GIS techniques for investigating how uneven social geographies and infrastructure provision differentially affect various social groups. The study found that within the Gold Coast many social groups that are potentially vulnerable to transport disadvantage, such as the unemployed and the elderly fared relatively better than the overall population in terms of spatial and temporal access to public transport. By comparison young people on average suffered greater transport disadvantage that the overall population. The study concludes by arguing for greater attention to issues of transport disadvantage and to the development of more sophisticated and empirically richer techniques for the analysis of transport disadvantage. Yes Yes
This paper analyses the effect of fiscal redistribution on regional income inequality in South Africa using the spatial models. Yearly provincial-level data on different spending categories are considered for the period from 2014 to 2018. The study uses various spatial panel specifications to control for both spatial dependence and heterogeneity among provinces. When factor incomes and market prices are controlled for, empirical results indicate that local inequality spills over to neighbouring provinces. Particularly, a basic point increase in local income inequality contributes about 0.14 to 0.158-point increase in income inequality of neighbouring provinces. Furthermore, provincial spending allocation to social development grant and education spurs regional income inequality while expenses receipt on health, infrastructure, and conditional grants exhibit mitigating effects on provincial income inequality. These findings suggest that health, infrastructure, and conditional grants are key sectors to prioritize in the government’s efforts to reduce income inequality.
This paper applies established methods from population geography to assess the impact of Australia’s emerging housing affordability crisis in shaping the distribution of Australia’s population into more or less advantaged places. Using a whole of population measure of locational advantage/disadvantage, we analyse the characteristics of movers, their reasons for moving, and their pre and post move residential outcomes. We find evidence at the population level of a ‘two-speed’ process, where - on average - Australians are moving to slightly more advantageous locations, but more vulnerable groups undertake more frequent, multi-step moves to disadvantaged areas. Housing affordability is found to be the key driver of the selective migration of some Australians into less advantaged places. The paper highlights the dynamic character of places, the increasing importance of housing affordability as a determinant of population distribution, and signals a need to look beyond simple place-based interventions.
This study aims to bring the role of population mobility into contemporary academic understandings of socio-spatial polarisation. The term, 'socio-spatial polarisation' refers broadly to the growing gap between rich and poor households in both socio-economic position ('socio') and geographic location ('spatial'). While an extensive literature exists concerning the ways in which housing and labour markets affect urban socio-spatial patterns, limited attention has been given to the fundamental role of household mobility in creating these spatial patterns. A substantial influx or out-movement of particular groups of households (e.g. high or low income; young students or retirees) from various parts of a city, for example, can potentially re-shape the socio-spatial structure. During recent decades, the socio-spatial divisions that characterise Australia's major cities have become more pronounced. In other words, not only has the income gap between rich and poor households widened (AIHW 2007), but this gap has played out spatially in differentiating the urban communities that house the rich and poor. Socio-spatial polarisation has become a recognised feature in Australia's major cities (Randolph & Holloway 2005; Yates & Wood 2005; Reynolds & Wulff 2005). For households, location within the city has become a crucial determinant of overall welfare, including outcomes associated with health, education, employment, real income, social well-being social capital and personal security (for an overview, see Maher 1999). These socio-spatial divides, therefore, are a matter of public concern. House prices and rent levels play a pivotal role in shaping the socio-economic landscape of the metropolitan area by determining where people can live based on their economic resources. This study focuses on socio-spatial polarisation in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria and Australia's second largest city. Melbourne's population of 3.9 million accounts for 73 per cent of the State of Victoria's population. A low-density sprawled metropolitan region, Melbourne covers 7694 square kilometres and runs approximately 116 kilometres north to south and 122 kilometres east to west. The analysis disaggregates Melbourne into sixteen ABS-defined Statistical Subdivisions (SSDs) and discusses them in terms of four broad housing market areas.
Current UK housing policy favours high-density, mixed-use development on previously developed urban land. This ties in with a general policy to promote an 'urban renaissance', largely because of its claimed advantages for sustainability. However, there has been little testing to date of sustainability impacts in practice. This is particularly true for the social equity aspect of sustainability, despite its acknowledged centrality to the concept. This paper outlines the development of a theory of social equity in relation to urban form and presents empirical research based on this to test the case of the so-called 'compact city', that is, high-density, mixed-use urban form. The research involved a comparative investigation of a range of alleged social equity impacts in 25 medium-sized English cities of differing levels and types of compactness. The findings suggest that, in certain respects and with certain qualifications, the compact city has the potential to promote social equity. Likely benefits include reduced car dependency and lower levels of social segregation, while the main problem is likely to be a lack of affordable, decent-sized homes. Positive effects are emerging in response to re-urbanisation and development on derelict land, and the cities which most support equity appear to be those that have a large proportion of high-density housing and a large quantity of locally provided services and facilities.
Then and Now: Twenty Five Years of National Urban Policy in Australia
- L Orchard